Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very happy to have it, and thank you for that assistance, Madam Acting Deputy President. Labor will support the bill that's in front of the Senate, but I observe that the vocational education system has collapsed under the coalition. The amendments in the bill are designed to reduce the administrative burden on the department and recipients and reduce the reliance on traditional debt recovery.

Apprentices are extremely low-paid. Access to financial support like this actually really matters. Take, for an example, an apprentice boilermaker under the manufacturing and associated industries award. The award rate for a first-year boilermaker apprentice is $12.48 an hour—65 per cent of the minimum wage. In their second year it's $14.75 an hour, and in their third year it's $17.02 an hour. Being trade qualified really matters. It's worth the investment. As somebody who has represented skilled tradespeople my whole working life, I can tell you that these are really good jobs. But almost half of all apprentices drop out before they get their trade, and the low rate of apprentice pay is one of the main reasons that people drop out. If you have to choose between getting a trade and putting food on the table, that makes life very difficult for young apprentices.

Apprentices are also vulnerable, more vulnerable than most people in the community, to wage theft. Australians have followed what has happened particularly in the hospitality industry: George Calombaris, $7.8 million in unpaid wages; Heston Blumenthal, $4 million in unpaid wages; Neil Perry, an estimated $10 million in unpaid wages, with timesheets tampered with and changed. The workers who bore the brunt of this theft weren't lawyers, politicians or journalists; they were apprentice chefs—people at the lowest end of the labour market and some of the lowest paid.

Government senators interjecting—

It might be amusing for senators opposite, but these people are very vulnerable people who have borne the brunt of the coalition's failure to manage the economy and the labour market.

Research from the University of Queensland shows that this exploitation in the hospitality industry is institutionalised. It found that unpaid penalty rates and unpaid superannuation—which I understand, following today's Senate debate, we're giving people an amnesty for—were rife and institutionalised. A first-year apprentice chef being paid award wages makes $474.38 a week. Being underpaid at such a low salary is devastating for young workers. There must be substantial action to increase the pay of apprentices across the board. I want to commend the work of trade unions, who are doing that work. There will always be a need to cover the upfront costs of starting an apprenticeship. That's why we supported the original trade support legislation, and that's why we'll support the legislation here today.

The original trade support loans system was a product of the 2014 budget. I think we all remember the 2014 budget. It provided $2.7 million in funding for the original loan program and cut the Tools for Your Trade program, which represented $1,914 million straight out of the pockets of Australian apprentices. The original Tools for Your Trade program provided $800 in cash. It was a Howard government program, which was expanded by Labor in government, where it was increased substantially to $5,500 over the course of the apprenticeship, including a $1,500 bonus on completion. Labor did that because we're a party that recognises the real value of skilled trades. It's Labor that built the TAFE system around the country, and it's Labor who's going to have to defend it. The Abbott government axed the Tools for Your Trade initiative. The then industry minister—we've had five industry ministers over the course of this government, and no industry policy—Ian Macfarlane, said, 'We've got evidence that they're spending the money on tattoos and mag wheels for their cars, and birthday parties.' That's where the coalition government has come from on these schemes. What an insult to hardworking, low-paid apprentices right at the bottom of the labour market trying to find their path to a decent life or adults who are changing their career, mid-career, who often take a pay cut to retrain. The coalition government has taken every opportunity to make their lives harder, their prospects of completing their apprenticeship more remote and the prospects of getting good jobs in decent industries that pay a decent wage almost impossible in some regional communities.

Those opposite love to dress up in high-vis—we saw a bit of that today. They love to pretend that they've ever done anything with their hands. I've been listening with great interest to the Weatherboard and Iron podcasts of some of the National Party members, who you can almost see from here, but not quite. These people have never struggled to put food on the table on an apprentice wage. People who talk about weatherboard and iron have rarely lived in one of those homes, and they've rarely met anybody who has. All they know is about the sharp suits and the soft chairs in executive life. They don't know the smell of a workshop or the sounds of machines, and they certainly don't know what it takes to run an economy and run a labour market that produces good jobs and a reasonable prospect of a young apprentice coming out of their trade and going into a decent job. We heard a lot today about the increases in jobs. What we haven't heard much about today is good jobs, decent jobs and trade jobs.

In truth, there are 150,000 fewer apprentices every year in this country because the team opposite have mismanaged the economy and mismanaged TAFE. There are now fewer Australians in training than there were a decade ago. That's 150,000 lost opportunities for our kids to have a better life; 150,000 opportunities for people to retrain gone; 150,000 opportunities for decent businesses to invest in their future workforce capability gone; and 150,000 apprenticeships and traineeships that the country needs for a more productive economy and for a better economic future.

I've talked to thousands of tradies over the course of my working life—fitters, machinists, boilermakers, electricians, auto mechanics, sheet-metal workers, aerospace engineers—who are deeply worried that their kids will not have the same opportunities that they have had. They're not actors pretending to be tradespeople wearing the high-vis. I've worked with hundreds of businesses, large and small, that can't afford to let their tradespeople retire because they don't have the workers to replace them. Across the country our TAFEs—mismanaged—are emptying out from deliberate mismanagement. As we face the key challenges of the 21st century, dealing with a more unstable global environment, the re-industrialisation of our economy to avoid climate change, the social and technological challenges of the future of work, we do so without 150,000 extra skilled workers who could have helped the country to build its response.

Instead of dealing with the shortage of skilled tradespeople, what did the advertising executive who passes for a Prime Minister do? He hired an actor. The advertising executive hired an actor to paper over the fact that there is no decent policy from this government, either in the labour market, to create good jobs, or in vocational education or training, to deliver decent jobs and decent apprenticeships for ordinary Australians in the regions. Hiring a television personality to save this government's record on vocational education is like trying to weld with a hairdryer. It might work on the whiteboard when you're doing the marketing exercise, but it will never deliver one extra job in regional New South Wales, one extra job in suburban Brisbane or country Brisbane, or one extra job in Dandenong or Shepparton. It will deliver advertising messages—focus grouped to within an inch of their lives—designed to prop up a government that's lost the capacity to have an agenda for the future of Australia. The Guardian reports that the government is paying Mr Cam $345,000 for 15 months—11 times the wage for a first-year apprentice chef. Minister Cash didn't want you to know that. She put in a very good effort trying to make his salary commercial in confidence.

We need a serious effort from government to recruit and retain young Australians as apprentices. We have to rebuild our skills system. The government should start by retaining the apprentices and trainees who have already started their apprenticeships. Only 56.7 per cent of apprentices and trainees complete their courses, and that figure is going down. This means that over 43 per cent of apprentices and trainees drop out before they are qualified. That is a huge cost to business and a huge cost to the government. More importantly, it is huge lost opportunities for thousands of young women and men whom our system is letting down.

The number one reason cited by apprentices and trainees who left was, for many of them, workplace culture. Of women who dropped out, 44.7 per cent reported being bullied at work. Another reason that young apprentices cited was pay and working conditions—